Coming soon.. sooner than everywhere else!

I walked by our streetside DVD vendor two days ago and saw a new X-men movie for sale. Strange, I thought, I hadn’t heard about a new Wolverine movie having been released. Liking the X-Men series, I brought a copy home.

Taking a closer look at the cover description, it stated the movie was to be released in UK and Australia April 28th and 29th, and in USA May 1st. Wow, I thought- my first chance at a movie pre-screening.

The DVD was excellent quality; this wasn’t a movie theater recording on a camcorder. In fact, this must have been leaked directly from the movie studio, because the product was still unfinished! Some scenes were simple computer-graphics silhouettes which were obviously intended to be replaced with fancier special effects, like airplane flights and complicated fight sequences. And we chuckled at the wires still visibly pulling the actors through the air, giving us a glimpse at how some of the effects were staged.

It still amazes me that this kind of pirating continues so openly here. Selling this kind of a DVD in America would probably land you in jail. But laws regulating copyright in the US simply are ignored here, despite some talk in official circles about cracking down on the practice more heavily.

In case you’re wondering about the movie, I thought it was a good one despite the poor official reviews. It’s entertaining, which is about all one could ask for from a comic book movie. But the stakes for my screening were much lower: $0.75 to own a new release is a lot less of a gamble than forking over $18 for two movie theater tickets!